A Fireplace Transformation: From An Awkward Fireplace to a Modern Elegant Fireplace

A new modern fireplace in a Victorian period propertyBefore – A pinkish fully tiled bulky fireplace

A fireplace transformation sounds sooo more complicated than it actually is. At least if you live in London, because you simply cannot have a traditional wood fire anymore. It is an offense to use a traditional chiminea in “Smoke Control Areas” and you could be fined up to GBP1000 if one gets caught. erm, no thanks.

Our cat, Leopold, in front of the new fireplace

Therefore anything you would do to your traditional fireplace will be a change of aesthetic and that sounds much more easy to do.

When I first started to look at what we could do with the fireplace, it was a bit of a jungle to understand between the products in the market: Gas fireplace, Electric fireplace, Bio-Ethanol Fireplace, Wood stoves, etc… and one that would match our design preference.

But yes so the law made it easier for us, and because we didn’t want anything complicated (we are millennials, after all, we have blogs to write and Netflix to watch)… I can see your eyes rolling… so rude; I decided to settle on a small Bio-Ethanol firepit.

Benefits of Ethanol is as follows :

no chiminea to clean/ no maintenance, it burns a specific BioEthanol, once it has burned all the fuel, that is it, you don’t need to clean anything (unless you managed to spill some).

Relatively safe, there is no smoke, but always keep an adult in the room and have a CO2 Fire extinguisher nearby.

Easy rules on how to use it. Fill the Bio-ethanol container tank when it is cold, never hot. (refer to the documentation that comes with the insert)

Downside :

You need to buy fuel, and it is not always easy to find any. Click here to find out where we get ours.

For the surround, a simple mantel design which will be a quiet reminder of the dado rail and (upcoming) wood panels, and a black insert that can fit the small Ethanol firepit.

How we transformed it – A visual story – click on links for more info

A Before Video :

We removed all the tiles, hoping to find an ancient Victorian fireplace but hey noI designed roughly the idea of living room/ fireplace i had with SketchUpThe fireplace chiminea was already closed, so we had the fireplace plastered as a box and any gap was filled with expanding foam. The tiles are 60x30cm and we used them as Hearth. A tile cutter was used to cut it to the dimension leaving 0.3mm as grout gap. We used PTB Fibre from BAL to level the floor and as adhesive to the tiles.once the new tiles were installed (not grouted yet here), we had the plasterer skim the wallsNicely skimmed here and drying (took 3 days)The insert was painted Dulux Rich Blackin Matt finish. The 44inch fireplace surround was sourced on a UK webshop, and it fitted perfectly.I grouted the files (must have said it to everyone i saw that week) with BAL micromax 2 Ebony. The Bio-Ethanol basket insert comes from biofire.com

Thank you for reading!

Hope you enjoyed this transformation,

Save any picture you like in Pinterest using the left bar and share it if you enjoyed it.

8 replies to A Fireplace Transformation: From An Awkward Fireplace to a Modern Elegant Fireplace

Day and night. I mean the pink tiled one – whoever thought of that, lol. It looks modern and a proper feature in the room! I am sure in Christmas time the pressies will look awesome stacked in front of it! Great work!

Really interesting read especially as I’m thinking of doing the same in my livingroom. We have an awful electric fire inside a horribly cheap fire surround which I really dislike. I’d like to get rid of it and replace it with a wood burner. We don’t need it to heat the room so would probably just be there to look nice. I’ve been putting it off as I thought it was a massive job. But looking at this it may not be as bad as I thought. Thank you!

You’re very welcome and I appreciate your comment. It is totally worth it! It makes such a difference in the room and I can’t believe i would be happy with the old one as we were repainting the room anyway. Only one thing is: it resulted with a few (13) bags of rubble that we took to the tip but if you don’t have a surround made out of tile I don’t imagine you’d have that much rubble. Let me know if you need any advice. Good luck!